Anime is always more risky than manga. Pretty much everyone has a manga specifically geared to their interest somewhere, and the largely black and white format of manga makes it cheaper to produce than even the average western comic book. Producing a show is much more expensivenote Even a cheaply done 12 episode anime can cost $1,000,000 to produce when all is said and done, and that's the cheap stuff. And while a lot of manga is made to be accessible and disposable, the demographics of TV watchers is different. This is the major reason anime is mostly populated by shounen and shoujo, as kids simply have more time. Meanwhile, josei manga rarely ever gets made into anime, if reaching television at all.

Anime also requires voice actors and a hopefully decent animation budget. On the other hand, it's much easier to make a show based on a known money-generating property. Making a show suddenly becomes lucrative once you figure in things like new merchandise (character Image Song and soundtracks, most noticeably) which pays for the show. This is the main reason H-games made into anime are the most successful financially and on the other extreme, why most Anime First shows for youngsters are explicitly Merchandise-Driven. Magical Girl and Mecha series in particular have a high chance of being Anime First.

Occasionally manga comes out after such an anime, but only as a limited run. Some manga run concurrently to a show, so divergences are common and accepted. You don't want them to be exactly alike or the audience will wonder why you're messing with the story. You also rarely get a sort of Double Subversion where the manga comes out first, but the original project was conceived as an anime; the manga was primarily intended as advertisement. (Two well-known examples are Nausicań of the Valley of the Wind and Neon Genesis Evangelion.)

Not to be confused with the common gripe that all of the anime examples on a trope page come first. (Seriously, guys, it's alphabetical. Either add in some examples from advertising, or let it go.)

The basic idea is certainly not unique to anime - many animated children's shows begin their lives as children's book franchises and later become animated adaptations, as existing properties certainly have a chance of taking off with the built-in fanbase. And it's not just animation. Many live action movies and TV shows are based on novels and comic books for the same reason.

The Big O. The order went First Season -> Manga -> Second Season, so the Manga version goes off in a completely different direction from the show (particularly regarding Beck and the ending). Some ideas from the Manga made it into the Second Season, if somewhat obtusely.

...which was followed by Manga (unreleased in the US) based on the Second Season.

Cowboy Bebop. Two manga series for this show do exist, but they were developed as promotional material for the anime. "Shooting Star", which came first, was more of an original Alternate Universe type story, and the second series was a direct tie-in.

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, which has the same case as Concrete Revolutio. However, the manga focuses on the Conquest Club while the anime (and most of the other stuff) focuses on the Defense Club.

Danganronpa 3note Not to be confused with New Danganronpa V 3, which is a game that's part of its own saga is the Grand Finale of the Hope's Peak Academy saga and the first original Danganronpa anime, and the reason for that is that the series's writer thought that its story would be best expressed in anime format.

Digimon Xros Wars. While the manga debuted first by around a fortnight, the anime was announced and presumably in production for months beforehand and the manga specifically adapts it, so it still qualifies for this trope.

The sequel, Eureka Seven AO had the manga come out first - but since the anime was announced at around the same time and was released three months after the manga's first chapter, it's clear the manga is more of an advertisement, in the vein of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Galaxy Angel was supposed to be The Anime of the Game, but the game's release ended up being delayed so long that the anime couldn't really base itself on it. Galaxy Angel Party is the only manga adaptation set in the same Alternate Universe as the anime.

Hell Girl. The anime and manga began releasing almost simultaneously, but the former is the original and the latter the adaptation (anime has a longer lead time than manga). The manga's quite different, and lacks Hajime and Tsugumi except in omakes.

Kujibiki Unbalance - originally an entirely fictional manga series from Genshiken, it later spawned a fictional anime - when Genshiken became a real anime, Kujibiki Unbalance got three real episodes, and then became a full-fledged anime series in real life - the manga was released alongside it.

Last Exile. The sequel series was weird here; The first episode technically predated the manga, as it was shown at a con. Most viewers were able to see a few chapters of the manga before airing began, though.

In a strange inversion, most fans of Lil Pri think that the anime adaptation came before the video games and manga, when the manga really came first.

A Little Snow Fairy Sugar was adapted into a three-volume manga with the first volume released a couple months after the show's premiere. The manga followed the anime's plot pretty faithfully for the first two volumes then diverged significantly from it in the last one.

Mai Hi ME was an Anime First, but despite popular belief Mai-Otome could better be described as "Anime Simultaneously". The thing was the production teams for the anime and manga were both given the same settings and characters, but worked with them in entirely different ways. So despite what people think to the contrary, the manga isn't, nor could it have been, an adaptation.

Nausicań of the Valley of the Wind is a weird example wherein the manga was released first, but primarily to help the production of and promote the (anime) film. This example is further atypical in that the manga wound up being a major Adaptation Expansion, starting its run two years before the film ultimately came out... and finishing ten years after it, a total run of twelve years. (And unlike with Evangelion below, this had nothing to do with Schedule Slip.)

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an unusual example of a single show's popularity lasting over a decade due to careful merchandising which is still regularly released. Various spinoff manga exist, including the intermittently produced one that ran alongside the original show (see below).

Even though the manga began publication before the anime began airing, it was made as a promotional tie-in for the anime series which was in production at the time, as with Nausicaa. Amusingly, the manga ended up running for 18 years...because of Schedule Slip.

Princess Tutu is a notorious example as its manga removed many of the anime's original plot elements, pretty much screwing with the actual point of what the story was really aiming for.

Psycho-Pass. The 22-episode anime began airing on noitaminA in October 2012, while the manga began running in November.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with a three volume manga adaptation released concurrently with the anime (but after the anime aired the episodes depicted in each volume). It also has two manga Spin Offs: Puella Magi Kazumi Magica and Puella Magi Oriko Magica. Kazumi Magica began serialization while the anime aired and is still ongoing. Oriko Magica skipped serialization entirely and was released as a two-volume series shortly after the anime's conclusion. A (noncanon) anthology manga series was released several months after the anime ended. Another manga Spin Off will be released alongside the Compilation Movie.

Sands of Destruction was originally conceived as a video game. Midway through production, they decided an anime would be a good way to promote the game, and so a second team split off to produce it. The anime was released before the game in both Japanese and US markets, despite being started later. It was later adapted into a manga as well.

Tenchi Muyo! - a manga was created in the gap in between the first and second OV As and actually kept going despite the gap between OVA 2 and OVA 3. There was also a 6-issue American made comic based off of Tenchi Universe

The Vision of Escaflowne: Due to its Troubled Production, the TV show hit the screens after the very first manga adaptation appeared in stores, despite the latter being actually based entirely on preproduction materials for the former. Two more mangas and a movie adaptation have been produced after the show aired. Both are alternate re-tellings of the TV series, and if you were a fan of the television series before the film was released (2001 in Japan, 2003 in North America) and were upset with the drastic changes made in the latter, chances are you'll also be surprised and (quite possibly) upset with the differences in the manga series as well - assuming you haven't picked them up yet.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy